Kurt Waldheim

The Justice Department's chief Nazi-hunter has put the Reagan administration in a sticky spot. In a memorandum to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, he recommends that Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations, be barred from the United States as a suspected war criminal. A 1978 law excludes aliens who took part in Nazi war crimes. The memo to Mr. Meese from Neal Sher, head of the Office of Special Investigations, says Kurt Waldheim was involved in the murder of Yugoslav partisans when he...

Kurt Waldheim, the erudite diplomat who served as UN secretary general and Austria's president but left the world stage a pariah after his Nazi past was exposed, died Thursday. He was 88. Austrian state media said Mr. Waldheim, who was hospitalized last month with an infection, died of heart failure in Vienna. The case that defined the legacy and memory of the longtime diplomat was built around a grainy black-and-white photograph that showed a young Kurt Waldheim -- tall, lean and uniformed --...

Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case By Shirley Hazzard Viking, 131 pages, $17.95 Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations and now president of Austria, is not much of a villain. Even after reading this bleak history of his lies and incompetence, one can`t exactly hate him because there isn`t enough to hate. For 10 years, Waldheim acted as the world's premier statesman while concealing his history as an...

Robert Rhodes James, a historian and biographer who had been a Conservative member of Britain's Parliament and an investigator of Kurt Waldheim's war record, died Thursday. He was 66. Mr. James, who was knighted in 1991 for political service, will be best remembered for his historical work as a writer who focused largely on British politics in the 19th and 20th Centuries. "Anthony Eden," his biography of the Conservative who was prime minister in 1955-57, was called...

Kurt Waldheim, the erudite diplomat who served as UN secretary general and Austria's president but left the world stage a pariah after his Nazi past was exposed, died Thursday. He was 88. Austrian state media said Mr. Waldheim, who was hospitalized last month with an infection, died of heart failure in Vienna. The case that defined the legacy and memory of the longtime diplomat was built around a grainy black-and-white photograph that showed a young Kurt Waldheim -- tall, lean and uniformed --...

Speaking to a group of Austrian officials and dignitaries that included former President Kurt Waldheim, Pope John Paul II said Saturday that European Christians had a moral obligation to fully reconcile with the Jews. "We cannot forget that the history of Europe is tightly entwined with the history of the people from whence came our Lord, Jesus," the pope said. "Unspeakable suffering was inflicted on the Jewish people in Europe, and we cannot affirm that all the roots of this...

I read in one of your articles that a decision by the U.S. government to bar Kurt Waldheim from the United States would devastate Austria's economy. The Austrians also claim that we and others are interfering with "interior matters" vis a vis the affair of Kurt Waldheim. We once before interfered with Austrian politics; thousands of white crosses and Stars of David in the fields of Europe bear witness to that interference. The solution to the affair Waldheim is simple--don`t elect him. As one U.S. senator...

Pope John Paul II has drawn Jewish and Israeli outrage by conferring a papal knighthood on the former Austrian president, Kurt Waldheim, who has been accused by the U.S. Justice Department of serving with a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans during the Second World War. The bestowal of the Order of Pius IX in the Vatican's embassy in Vienna on July 6 seemed a remarkable contrast to efforts at reconciliation between the...

Gottfried Reinhardt, a U.S. film director whose father, Max Reinhardt, founded the Salzburg Festival in Austria, says he has declined an Austrian medal because of Kurt Waldheim's ties to Nazi war crimes. Reinhardt, 73, who was supposed to accept the Medal of Merit Tuesday, said he also asked Waldheim, president-elect of Austria, not to "desecrate" a memorial to his father at the annual Salzburg Festival next month.

The sign is misleading by design. "Documentation Center" it says, a humble introduction to the third-floor office where memory has been honored, history made, justice sought and sometimes exacted. Despite the simplicity of the plaque, this is the place. The tip-off is the round-the-clock police guard. In Central Europe, where everyone lives under the shadow of history, Simon Wiesenthal has chosen to plant his office in this gray block adjacent to the wartime...

I am a devout Catholic but I am appalled by the decision of the Pope to meet the Austrian president, Kurt Waldheim. Many Catholics truly believe that the Pope is not infallible in this matter. Moreover, he insults the whole civilized human race by meeting an accused Nazi who has been hiding behind the UN building in New York for the last 40 years. I hope that all Catholics, including the clergy, will raise their voices to reach Rome and let the Pope know their feelings on this shameful meeting.

By Harris O. Schoenberg, Director, United Nations Affairs, The International Council of B`nai B`rith | November 8, 1991

Once in a decade the world's senior diplomatic post is up for grabs. To get the job of United Nations secretary general, however, one does not campaign in the traditional sense. Overt displays of ambition are considered bad form. The selection process has been compared to a shooting gallery. Ducks, or candidates in this case, keep popping up and getting shot down. The duck/ candidate who makes it to the end is the new secretary general. As a result some strange ducks have won in the...

The world's largest advertising agency has quietly canceled its contract with Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations secretary general, because of allegations that he was a Nazi war criminal, officials said Thursday. The Austrian office of Young & Rubicam, a Manhattan-based firm with many Jewish clients, had a contract to do political advertising for Waldheim's race for president of Austria. Mark Stroock, an agency senior vice president, said the contract was canceled Tuesday.

Within the next 12 months the United Nations must select a new Secretary General. It is more urgent than the full year makes it seem. The post-Cold War world is one of unsuspected turbulence. Iraq's Saddam Hussein is the shape of the new threat: regional aggression and weapons of mass destruction, especially chemical, easily available. Apart from Kuwait, some 80 international boundaries are in dispute. Fallout from the population explosion is felt increasingly in the ravaging of rain...

I generally agree with your editorials. Unfortunately, you didn`t go far enough and raise the question of the one-sided war guilt pertaining to World War II. By now, over 40 years after the event, and while daily war crimes are being committed by one or the former allied nations, the matter of WW II war guilt ought to be moot. After 36 years in this country, I still have to come across one book, one article or news item telling of allied war criminals being prosecuted for such...

Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case By Shirley Hazzard Viking, 131 pages, $17.95 Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations and now president of Austria, is not much of a villain. Even after reading this bleak history of his lies and incompetence, one can`t exactly hate him because there isn`t enough to hate. For 10 years, Waldheim acted as the world's premier statesman while concealing his history as an...

Robert Rhodes James, a historian and biographer who had been a Conservative member of Britain's Parliament and an investigator of Kurt Waldheim's war record, died Thursday. He was 66. Mr. James, who was knighted in 1991 for political service, will be best remembered for his historical work as a writer who focused largely on British politics in the 19th and 20th Centuries. "Anthony Eden," his biography of the Conservative who was prime minister in 1955-57, was called...

Along with showcasing concerts by standup comedians, cable television has a penchant for taking its cameras into the midst of the judicial process. Among its exercises has been the mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, and now comes "HBO Showcase: Waldheim: A Commission of Inquiry" (7 p.m. Sunday), a 3 1/2-hour courtroom examination of the accusations that Kurt Waldheim, president of Austria and former secretary-general of the United Nations, was involved in war crimes as a German army lieutenant in...

The World Jewish Congress released a German army document Wednesday showing that Kurt Waldheim, the president-elect of Austria, was aware of the slaughter of women, children and other innocents in Greece during World War II. The document, a captured 1944 intelligence report found in the National Archives, was the first released by the group since Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations, won the Austrian presidency in a June 8...

The international commission of historians convened by the government of Austria to study Kurt Waldheim's record during World War II has reported. It found that, at the very least, the current Austrian president witnessed Nazi atrocities against Jews and other civilians, did nothing to stop them and during 40 years of public life lied about his wartime activities. The Austrian people must now determine whether Mr. Waldheim remains fit to represent the democratic values of the Austrian Republic.